A world-first online measles chatbot, designed by two young New Zealand doctors, has gone gangbusters over the last few weeks, with a surge in the number of parents from the Pacific asking for advice.

The chatbot, Mitara, has received more than 30,000 interactions since it launched just a month ago.

“The bot was originally designed for New Zealand, and now that it has transitioned to users mostly in the Pacific, the questions have drastically changed from ‘How do we prevent this?’ to ‘How do we go about treating this?’,” says Dr Canaan Aumua, who co-founded the initiative.

“Now, we’re receiving messages direct from parents who are sending pictures of their sick children with measles, asking for help. So for Sanjeev and me, this is a real obvious way to see the sheer desperation that is in Samoa at the moment that these families are feeling.”